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Tour de Cryx – The Hellbringer Experince – Midpoint

Normally, I do my midpoint review after having two games with the caster, trying to take stock of the way that they play and make some changes to how they operate. This time, though, I was at a tournament, and got in three games in a row, so we’ll do the midpoint there.

From, the Overview, I had a Black Industries list that included a number of jacks, a significant portion of troops, and a few solos. It was a list that I wanted to try, but I had some reservations while thinking about it. Gaspy 3 has no way of making them faster, and no way of giving the troops a real advantage, outside of applying calamity. Combine that with the fact that this was a Masters Event, one where I could use the ADR and get a vanguard bonus, and I was all in on making a strange and bizzare list.

Initial Thoughts

Often, I’ll make lists I don’t like for Masters/Champions, and then put what I really want in the vanguard. Often, people won’t be able to piece together which portions of the list I want, and which I don’t for the certain match up. That said, this was the ADR list:

In each of the three games I used a different configuration. I used malice twice, two Inflictors once, the Harrower once, and, in all three games I used all three units.

Drudges are much better than I give them credit for. With P+S 12 on their attack, and MAT 5, they look pretty wimpy. CMA, though, makes them much more versatile, and the Overlords with Veteran Leader is simply money. MAT 8 P+S 14 attacks, before any debuffs, are simply solid, and committing two of them can take out most solos and ding up light warjacks no problem. Get more than a few on a single target and the damage starts to pile up. The Drudges aren’t something that really handle infantry well, which is a shame. Their counterparts, however, handle infantry like a champ. The Overlords were some of the best models on the field that day, laying waste to multiple units, holding zones and flags, and being a general nuisance. Together, I felt that they were a pretty strong compliment to my ‘Jack load out, as they were prepared to missile out and take down targets of opportunity.

Deploying was a bit of a pain, but when I used the Drudges to either overload a zone or to simply continuously contest, they were there for me. In one game, I use a building on the opponents side to shelter their approach, the other game I knew I was only going to take one side of the board, so they were used to flood and contest the other, and the final game they were simply chaff, holding down wherever they went.

The jack loadout, frankly, kinda sucked.

I didn’t keep in the slayer the whole day, popping it out for an Inflictor each and every time with the help of the Soul Trappers. Once, I also switched out malice so that I had two Inflictors. Deathjack, Two Inflictors and Malice just isn’t enough to get real work out of. You have only Deathjack for damage output, the Inflictors are great for holding zones and protecting key pieces, but their damage output is so bad that I cannot really put it into words, especially against Wolds and Warjacks. The inflictors did pretty much half the job I expected, holding zones and making sure that I didn’t lose on scenario, but they didn’t do the other half that I wanted, which was taking down opposing heavies.

Malice, though, over performed so much that I want to figure out how to stick her into more lists. With Mobility and but a single focus allocated, she was hitting and getting big spikes of damage, and draging in targets to get, well. I thought they were going to get mauled to death by inflictors. Instead, they got tickled a little bit. She didn’t get to many souls, but what she got was enough to make it work.

Deathjack was a champ, pretty much the whole time. While he did AD, he essentially sat in the center lines, picking off targets of opportunity, casting Hex blast, and taking down the random model until it was time to commit the big bastard when there was little else to threaten him. He did his job better than I expected, and I went in expecting a lot.

Unyeilding, Gaspys Field Marshal, was pretty good throughout. While there were a number of times that I was frustrated that Improved Unyeilding wasn’t released yet, it let me see the times that I was going to beneift from the change in the rules.

Quick Tournament Recap

Lets take a walk, hopefully, real quick, through the games I played.

Game 1 was against Issyria in the Legions of Dawn in Breakdown. With a pile of weapon masters, I knew that I was going to be pushing how much my jacks were going to be able to take.

With the building, forest and rubble on my side, though, I was able to get into a situation that I really liked. Deathjack lurking behind the forest with the Inflictors up front to take the brunt of the enemies blow, the Harrower in the back, ready to drop AOE’s on people, with both units of drudges taking supporting positions. the one unit of drudges behind the building stayed safe from pretty much everything the entire game.

This one came down to the last turn. We had a huge back and forth over the center zone, but he committed to much infantry and the Overlords on the left simply blasted their minds out, and with vociferon nearby, all those delicious souls went directly to Asphyxious. the next turn I had 20 focus, and lit everything up. Finally, on my last turn, I was up 2 CP, and he had control of the right zone, I had control of the left, and we were fighting over the center. I ended my turn with 7 seconds left, but with no more turns left to play, I felt like it was the right decision. He had to score two of the zones to tie, but I was way up on Army Points left on the field, so with just 6 models, he couldn’t kill enough.

Everything here hummed except my placement of models. Overall, I was a fan of the list.

This moved me into the second game, against Kreuger 1 in Recon II. This one had me put in Malice, Two Inflictors and Deathjack.

This game, playing against Bones of Orboros, I was not particularly pleased. Earlier I had failed, with my other list, to really break the Woldwatchers, and this game had another pair, Wold Guardians and Wold Wardens. It wasn’t going to be the best. Turns out, that prediction was correct. I wasn’t able to take the game through skill or ability, but through having a ton of dudes to chew through. Here is where, though, that the Inflictors really showed their lack of damage potential, when I wasn’t able to kill Watchers as the game wound down. The Overlords were mostly superfluous, but still had moments to shine. The Drudges really were over matched when going against the Fulcrum, but what was I do to. someone had to go die to that thing.

This one felt like I was really on the backfoot, but because of the Def 13 and Arm 19+ that I had, I was able to force more shitty activations in a clustered period of time, causing me to win through clock, more than anything else. This game also pointed out very clearly that I needed to toss the ripjaws for Nightwretches. Guns would have been a godsend in this match.

The last game was a fairly simple game against Carver. Inflictor, Harrower and Malice, but this time because living targets can get poisoned, which would be great.

Instead, though, at the top of 3, I was able to walk deathjack over to carver and wail on his face. With 8 attacks against 4 fury, I didn’t really have a ton of wiggle room, but it was worth the shot. Instead, deathjack was exausted, rolled snake eyes on one of the attacks and left carver on 4. Asphyxious, confident that the game was over, was in a pretty tight spot and instead of seeing the game end in his favor, ended up on the wrong end of a Warhog’s Axe

These games showed me that I really needed to bring more oomph. These jacks were more expensive than some of the others, but they just didn’t have the oomph to push through.

Tweaks and Twists

After playing these three games, and knowing that I’d need two more, I actually went back to the drawingboard pretty strongly. I knew I was going to keep very little, but I had learned a ton.

Deathjack was a boss. He kept pushing games over the top for me, forcing opponents to commit their best tools to him, while I had plenty of tools to take down theirs once they were stuck in.

Overlords are a godsend at 8 points. Keep those bastards in.

I liked the Drudges, and they did well, but I also wanted to up the Jack Quotient to 5. I don’t know how I balance those two.

I felt Focus strapped nearly every game.

Inflictors, Harrower, and Malice weren’t cutting it. I needed to have more jacks with more oomph. This is where themes made me a bit irritated, because I would have loved to play with Barathrum, Nightmare, or even Erebus, but they were’t able to make the cut because stupid rules say I can’t use most character jacks.

Ripjaws are garbage. Always take nightwretches unless you have a very specific plan for them (Skarre 1, ect)

Vociferon has Soul Slave. I really should remember that. I didn’t cast a spell from him once in the whole tournament.

With that in mind, I came back with a list I was gung ho to try out. Asphyxious 3 turns out to have a really cool kit and I love playing him. Definitely one I am going to come back to after the tour, especially because I’m gonna get that big bastard up and painted.